When working on paper-based products e.g. paper, cardboard or cartons, raw sheets of material are typically used over tools like presses, punches or stripping tools. It is especially important when punching and stripping that parts punched or stripped from a sheet are reliably and quickly removed, since they will otherwise lead to problems with further processing stages. For example, cardboard elements punched out and not removed can lead to stoppages in the following processing machines. Besides that, it is important in the case of such applications that the sheets of material from which parts are punched or stripped are reliably transported further and do not become entangled in the tools. When removing entangled or jammed punching parts or sheets of material from machine tools, valuable time and work expenditure is wasted and unnecessary costs are incurred.
As an example of the state of the art, US 2008/0066595 A1 describes a bendable raising apparatus for lifting punching or stripping parts or sheets of material. The fact that simply a spring element with an unchanging spring rate is provided to lift the punching or stripping parts or sheets of material is, however, a problem in the raising apparatus described. Due to the single spring rate, it can happen that stripping or punching parts or sheets of material are lifted too quickly or too vigorously or too unreliably or too slowly, depending upon which materials or raw materials are being used.